The Eighth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Foreword Chris Saines CNZM Director Now in its eighth iteration, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) is increasingly one of the region’s, if not the world’s, most anticipated exhibitions. That expanding interest is driven by a geographical reach that furnishes the Triennial with an artistic diversity attached to few art museum-based exhibitions and has seen the series grow, since its inception in 1993, to become central to the discourse around art in the Asia Pacific. The rapidly evolving contemporary art infrastructure in the region’s major economies and the exciting transformations in its emergent nations are shifting the international gaze. While the curatorial model for the Triennial has changed over time, it has always responded to individual or collective artistic achievement rather than invited national representation. Where the first three APTs had an expansive co-curatorial model of in-country curators, writers and academics working alongside their Gallery or Australian-based equivalents, it is the Gallery itself that now largely surveys the region through intensive fieldwork. The earliest conversations we had around APT8 were driven by a strong instinct that performance and the body were key to contemporary art practice in the region. Artists were exploring the collective body’s organisation and activation. A parallel employment of the body to query the interplay of identity with globalisation, modernity and technology emerged, together with attention to how it takes up space and relates to its surroundings, urban or rural. The transformation of the everyday into art, through the use of the vernacular as a process rather than a subject, arose repeatedly. We also found, especially in some social and political contexts outside Australia, performance and its documentation was often, of necessity, limited to discreet artistic settings. Having been directly involved in both, I have a palpable memory of the energy of the first two APTs in 1993 and 1996, as do many who experienced them. Most particularly, the response of the public to the performative elements of APT1 resonated profoundly at the time. As we began to shape APT8, the rise in prominence of figuration and performance felt like a culmination of sorts. This return to some of the key elements of the APT’s founding years spurred the revival of the conference and the introduction